1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process of managing a network device, such as managing an operating state of a device connected to a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a printing device such as a multifunction peripheral, copying machine, or a printer was often used as a stand-alone device. Consequently, such a device could transition to a low power consumption state when not in use.
More recently, such a printing device is generally connected to a network and receives printing jobs and device control commands from a plurality of personal computers through the network. As a result, such a printing device connected to a network has difficulty in maintaining a low power consumption state as before (hereinafter, a printing device connected to a network will be referred to as a network device).
In particular, a network device management application is required to issue a wide variety of device control commands to a network device on a regular basis. Consequently, such an application often prevents the network device from transitioning to a low power consumption state.
On the contrary, there are market demands for a multifunction peripheral to lower power consumption to 1 watt or less. In addition, there is a strong demand to reduce frequency that a multifunction peripheral returns from a power saving state in a case where an unnecessary packet or instruction is received.
To solve the above problem, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-094681 discusses a technique in which a sleep frame is sent by broadcast transmission when a network device transitions to a lower power consumption state.
A network device management application receiving the sleep frame recognizes that the network device has transitioned to the lower power consumption state and avoids sending unnecessary frame to the network device. The network device management application sends a boot frame of a network device by broadcast transmission to recover the network device from the lower consumption state.
However, in the above-described network device management system, the network device management application decides on sending a boot frame by broadcast transmission to a network device based on whether the subject device is in a sleep mode. That is, the network device management application does not determine the content of the instruction, such as a priority level. Therefore, a boot frame may be sent to issue a device control command of a low priority based on the independent determination of a user of the network device management application. As a result, the network device may be prevented from transitioning to and/or remaining in a lower power consumption state.
On the contrary, if top priority is given to transitioning to a lower power consumption state, a device control command of high priority cannot be issued to the network device.